Hackers Used Facebook Quizzes To Take Data from 60,000 Users

Facebook quizzes are common and they can be a lot of fun. Be wary, however, because a recent lawsuit shows that hackers can use quizzes to steal user data.

Facebook recently filed a federal lawsuit against two Ukranian men who they claim lured more than 60,000 Facebook users into installing malicious browser extensions that exfiltrated their profile data and friends lists to offshore servers.

According to TheDailyBeast.com, Andrey Gorbachov and Gleb Sluchevsky then used the extensions to place their own advertisements onto Facebook’s news feed when victims visited through the compromised browsers.

The basically took information from quiz takers without authorization and likely used that information to place advertisements on the quiz takers Facebook feeds or other social media sites.

The quizzes and tests in question had names like “Supertest,” “FQuiz,” “Megatest,” and “Pechenka.”

While it appears that this particular scheme mostly targeted Russian-language victims, it's a cautionary tale for everyone. While tests and quizzes on Facebook are very popular, it's important to scrutinize the source of the quizzes you decide to take.